I just decided to try out Mozy, an online backup service, which has received stellar reviews from a bunch of reviewers. I don’t really need an online backup solution, as I keep all important documents in a remote subversion repository, and a copy of all images at an online gallery. Anyway, I decided to give Mozy a shot, as they now sport a client for the Mac platform.

I must say, the Mozy client works beautifully, and the 2GB free storage plan makes it easy to test the service without spending anything except the time. It took me less than 2 minutes to download and configure the mozy client to do remote incremental backups of a few select directories on my mac book. No problems.

So there I was, pretty impressed, until I decided to ready the Mozy privacy policy. It starts with the following:

We will not sell or market the email addresses or other collected personal information of registered Users to third parties.

We will not view the files that you backup using the Service.

We may view your file system information (file extensions, sizes etc. but not your file contents) to provide technical support.

So far, so good. Further down, however, I encoutered this:

Mozy, Inc. may disclose Personal Data, including the data you back up with the Service, with or without notice (a) if required by a subpoena or other judicial or administrative order, (b) where required by law, or (c) at our sole discretion, where we deem it necessary to protect the safety of any individual or the general public or to prevent violation of our User Agreement or the rights of Mozy, Inc. or any third party.

Now, I am not a lawyer, but that seems to be in direct contradiction with the first set of statements. The way I understand is this: At our sole discretion we may violate the privacy of the data you choose to back up.

Hmm. I am not sure I like that.

Additionally, it turns out that Mozy is based in Utah in the US. Again, I am no lawyer, but from what I can tell, the US have all but abandoned the idea of due process in their precious war on terror. For all I know, any old US government agency could waltz into Mozy’s data center and make a copy of whatever data they damn well want to.

Whoops. I just uninstalled the Mozy client.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Me, Software, network, rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.